Play With Me
by Nanaki BH
Summary: [MelloxMatt] Matt tries to figure out what his favorite game is. Though it's more like a retelling of the events of Wammy's through the perspective of Matt's videogames.


Disclaimer: _Death Note_ and all related characters and materials are property of Tsugumi Ohba and _Shonen Jump_. All videogames made reference to are property of their respective owners.

Play With Me

By: Nanaki BH

Schooling was a bitch, Matt believed. The teachers had always asked him impossible questions. Mello and Near's hands were always quick to be raised, competing to answer first, and somehow would always manage some acceptable answer. Which perplexed Matt to no end since they didn't even _study_ some of the questions that were asked in class. Yet there were things that confused him more than calculus, more than foreign languages, and more than current events. Even more than that, he wondered what his favorite videogame was.

He owned hundreds. Ones of all makes. Ones for consoles from Atari to 360, and even free standing handhelds from the 90's. Each one gave him some level of entertainment; some certainly more than others but it was so difficult to pinpoint which one he liked the most. It was a little like being at a really, really great restaurant where every food tasted absolutely delicious. How could he choose just one? He loved them all for many different reasons.

But what made certain ones more special than others were the memories he attached to them.

Mello hated his obsession. In general, Mello wasn't very big on videogames. The first time he met Mello, he was playing Ms. Pac-Man on his Game Boy. It was old school but it didn't require too much attention and it was easy to pause. That way, he wouldn't walk directly into anybody on accident when he was up and about. He didn't much care for venturing from his room but he had to if he wanted to avoid the lectures of those older than him. First time he met Mello, he wasn't distracted by his game. No, he found himself strangely distracted by his golden locks and smoldering stare. He must've stood in front of him for a good ten minutes, mouth agape before Mello finally rushed him, grabbed his game, and threw it to the ground. It met the floor with a pitiful crack. The game was destroyed and he would never forgive Mello since it was the only copy he had.

The Game Boy was fine but it was upgraded to a Color one once he found the opportunity to rummage through some of the new students' belongings. It would've been funny to replace the kid's Color with his old one but he was a collector, he decided. And it was one of the only things he had with him that was a gift from his family. It would've felt fundamentally wrong to abandon it.

For a similar reason, he decided to take Mello under his wing. Though, it became more of the opposite since Mello resisted to be his friend, then came back later to ask Matt to be his friend of his own accord. But still, he felt good being Mello's friend, like he was appreciating something someone else had abandoned.

Granted, Mello was something hard to appreciate with a tongue as sharp as his. He had a substantial collection of music games that he played back in his room. Whenever Mello saw him playing one, he would just start rambling on about nonsense, usually critiquing the music. Matt thought he had impeccable concentration before he met Mello. Amplitude was a hard game once you got to the hardest setting but it wasn't long before he realized just how _impossible_ it was with Mello yammering directly in his ear. He paused it, calmly set down the controller, and grabbed Mello roughly by the collar of his shirt before crushing their lips together.

A harsh "Fag!" and a black eye later, Matt returned to his game and found it even harder to concentrate without Mello around.

Matt discovered his love for goggles after playing Psychonauts. It was an easy game and Mello usually stuck around to watch him play. It was the first one he didn't flat-out mock and the first one he begged him to play just so he could keep watching. The story involved psychic agents who used their powers to serve justice. And it was weird as hell. It was no wonder why Mello liked it. It was also the first time Mello had ever sat so close to him. They sat up against the side of his bed and occasionally, Mello would shout for him to "run!" or "kill it!" and Matt felt happy to see Mello enjoying himself.

A week after playing it, Matt showed up at lunch wearing some goggles he'd pilfered and Mello couldn't deny a laugh since he knew where he'd gotten his inspiration. And Matt couldn't deny that he felt a sort of similarity between himself and Raz and his affection for the hot-headed Lili.

It was Spring when their teachers finally informed them of some very important tests that would be coming in the summer. Matt knew what that meant. Just looking across the room to where Mello sat, he could already see the gears in his mind turning, thinking up how he could out-genius Near. He knew it meant that Mello would be spending more time studying than sitting around with him or chasing him out in the field. Matt wasn't concerned about the tests at all, nor was he ever particularly worried about any of his studies. It amazed everyone else that he could be so lazy and still do so well. He often thought that if he applied himself a little more, that he could've been smarter than Mello and Near combined.

But he didn't want to be a crazy robot so he set to picking out which game he would be playing while the rest of the students picked out which books they would be memorizing. He narrowed his collection down to some old Playstation games; some he'd played and some he hadn't.

Mello sat at the desk in their room from dusk till dawn studying everything he could before he passed out from exhaustion. Matt picked out a game he knew he could play quietly without annoying him; Final Fantasy VII. He didn't even need to have the volume on but he left it on anyway since it had such a nice soundtrack. It quickly became the loneliest game he ever played. He sat and quietly leveled his party, allocated his materia, and defeated the bad guys as he listened to Mello's frustration.

He found himself identifying with another character, though; a certain Turk, Reno, and decided that he wanted to someday become a goggle-wearing, pot-smoking, alcohol-drinking, foul-mouthed redhead. Later when he was older, he found it ironic that he'd fallen for a blonde beauty who'd blown himself up.

Matt finished the game just before the tests. He started up Metal Gear Solid 3 right after them. Whereas he identified the seventh Final Fantasy as the loneliest game, he identified MGS3 as the saddest. Mello joined him in their room the night after the test right as the opening sequence began to play. He flopped down beside him and held firmly onto his arm. A shudder and a sniffle later, Matt knew that Mello was crying. Was it the tests? Was it stress? Was it Near? He never really knew but Mello ordered him to just _play. _And he did.

They skipped all their classes the next day and Mello stayed with Matt for the sixteen hours it took him to complete the game. By the end, they were both crying.

In a way, Matt was glad that he'd chosen a game with some openly gay characters. A week later, Mello finally decided to pay him back for that kiss Matt had given him such a long time ago.

After that, it was hard to decide if he even liked any of his other games. He lazed around for a while, just letting it soak in what a spectacular game Snake Eater had been. (Its erotic name didn't help any.) But after all, it was the reason why he had Mello sleeping next to him instead of just _next to _him. Or maybe it wasn't but something had surely convinced Mello to give Matt a fair shot. Hopefully it wouldn't be another shot to the eye, though.

He figured that after playing such a classic, he had to pick up something equally good. He convinced Roger to let him go out to buy some things by telling him it was for educational purposes and he took Mello along. They didn't need to go far. Besides, they had their proper "adult supervision". They were none too happy to find that his educational material had been videogames but paid for them nonetheless. Mello eagerly picked out ones with the worst ratings. The more blood, he figured, the better.

That same night, they huddled in front of the TV and Matt put in the second Silent Hill. James was a pansyass but Mello enjoyed watching Matt beat the shit out of monsters with a wooden plank. Mello held some sort of morbid fascination in the way the monsters would submit and writhe once he got them down. Although that made him worry about Mello's sanity somewhat, it reminded him of the time he'd spent on Psychonauts and felt proud that he could entertain him so well. Seeing him work so fervently on his studies was just utterly depressing. He was undoubtedly determined to "defeat" Near or whatever but he wasn't that great at it. That's why Matt enjoyed videogames. It was easy to blast your enemies or just walk the fuck away if things weren't going the way you wanted. Mello didn't like to play them himself and maybe that was why. It would make things look too easy and that wasn't how reality really was. He would have probably wanted to beat Near with a plank if that were socially acceptable, just so he could watch him writhe and hear Near beg for him to stop.

Mello's annoyance with Matt's obsession returned when he picked up Katamari Damacy. It interfered too much with his studies and he very often would fling Matt's controller across the room. Matt had learned to just drop it before Mello reached him, otherwise he would've injured his hands in the process. His hands were too precious to him for that. The level of stupid fun provided by Katamari was enough for him to endure Mello's fury, though. But it was definitely that game that made him the angriest by far. Its music was batshit and the voices were beyond bizarre. The game itself was bright and mind-warping. He didn't even have to take drugs to feel like he was on a trip while playing it. So if he was affected by it, then Mello must've been, too. And if that was what Mello was like on drugs, he made a note to himself to never let Mello touch any.

Then things changed. Mello wasn't as affectionate anymore... if he ever was. His attention became focused almost solely on his work.

Then L died. He was playing Legend of Legaia at the time.

Then Mello left. He was playing Shinobi then. He never finished it. Not because it kicked his ass three ways from Sunday but because he lost the will to continue it. That was incredibly rare. Nobody noticed nor cared. Nobody else paid attention to his obsession. There was nobody else to rambling to about good games and bad ones. There was nobody left to whine about the console wars to. And Matt had lost the only person who really understood him. Mello was the only person who'd ever made him really _feel _something, aside from fictional characters. It felt like losing The Boss all over again. Mello had something he had to do, something he had to take care of. He would prove himself no matter what.

And Matt was just sad that he couldn't follow because he knew that he was the only one who truly understood Mello, too.

He skipped his classes, put in MGS3, and let the tears fill his eyes until he finished it nearly twenty hours later. He spent an entire hour with his gun still pointed at The Boss' chest, finger hovering over the square button. He closed his eyes and muted it so he didn't have to hear the shot fire. And he just sobbed and thought about Mello and didn't stop crying until James Walsh stopped singing.

The day he could finally leave, he gathered all his things together and made off in search of Mello. He traveled with Phoenix Wright in the passenger seat to keep him from going crazy.

Seeing Mello's face, even as charred as it was, made him feel like he'd found a part of himself again. He had to take care of him for many days and nights and for that time, he ignored his collection completely. In the end, seeing Mello was a lot more satisfying than accomplishing anything he could ever do in a videogame. And maybe that was another reason Mello didn't play them. The real thing was just so much better.

Author's Notes: I always wanted to write about what Matt's favorite game would be. All of those were suitable since they either screamed Matt (such as Psychonauts) or were just so damn good that he couldn't deny it. So it turned into a story through the perspective of his videogames. Hope you enjoyed reading!


End file.
